


Color Me In

by prismaticjill42



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8814046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prismaticjill42/pseuds/prismaticjill42
Summary: After the war, the trio split to grieve and figure themselves out. After three months of wallowing, Ron moves into Grimmauld Place with Harry and their renewed friendship post-war rekindles old feelings and hidden emotions.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Watch Color Me In by Damien Rice, a part of the Guardian Sessions (acoustic) because that is actually Ron singing to Harry. https://youtu.be/M2SbH6tFLOs

Color Me In

A Harry/Ron Post War Fanfic

 

_Come let me love you, come let me take this through the end. Of all these useless dreams of living, all these useless dreams. Come let me love you, come let me love you, come let me in._

 

Ron picked up guitar after the war. In the aftermath, the wizarding world fell into a numb sort of complacency. There was a lot of retreat. Hermione returned to her parents and released them from the memory charm. She would stay with them for the next year, reveling in muggle England. Harry and Ron followed the rest of the Weasley clan back to the burrow where grieving began. After just a few days, Harry departed for 12 Grimmauld Place, which had been left to him after the Order dissipated. Ron retreated further. He holed up in his bedroom at the top of the burrow for weeks on end and taught himself to play the guitar. With Fred gone, with all of the missing pieces of their friends and family, nothing would ever be the same.

Slowly, they started to heal, though the wizarding world had to pick itself up rather quickly after Voldemort’s demise at the Battle of Hogwarts. The Ministry was shook to its core and forced to face a grim, tough reality. Hundreds of Death Eaters fled. The Ministry needed to stop them, and in some way begin to right the wrongs that had been done.

The Daily Prophet flocked to the burrow unable to find Harry Potter in his hiding. Where was “The Boy Who Lived?” Where was the one who killed Voldemort and saved all of them? Molly Weasley pushed them back and charmed the burrow into a fortress. All windows were boarded up, the curtains drawn so to speak. Eventually the journalists dispersed and focused their attentions on the reconstruction of the school and the new organization at the Ministry and Azkaban. There was so much work to do and just not enough wands.

Ron had silenced himself in as he plucked at the guitar strings. As a novice, he felt frustration as he tried to express the grief as well as the hope welling up inside of him. More than once he was tempted to use magic to build the melody for him, but he needed the catharsis too much. Days rolled past, weeks, and Ron wrote and wrote and wrote.

 

Just after dawn, three months after the war, Ron woke up to the smell of his mother’s cooking. Molly, ever the strength of the family, worked tirelessly to keep everything normal for the Weasleys. They were short a member, but they were determined to move forward, or at least she was. Every morning a large breakfast, every day a solid effort at life renewed. Molly hoped that Ginny would return to Hogwarts again for the coming year and that she’d be the first one to graduate since Percy. A little sense of normalcy couldn’t hurt. Ron was grateful, even if he was terrible at showing it.

He pulled on his jeans and a sweater adorned with his initial, the smallest and yet warmest token of love he had ever received, and gently eased his way into the hallway. It hadn’t been unusual for one or more of the Weasleys to take their meals in their bedrooms. It rotated, it seemed, between the lot of them, who was feeling the most down that particular day. In Ron’s case, it had been a few days since he joined his mother for a meal. As his feet lightly padded down the last few steps, Molly leaned her head around the post and smiled widely up at him.

“Oh Ronald,” her voice was chipper, grateful. “Sausages are up!”

“Thanks Mum,” he smiled back at her and ducked through the archway into the kitchen. The table was set for a feast. Molly hadn’t quite gotten the hang of her portions after she stopped cooking for the Order. Big families always grew and grew and she hadn’t ever been prepared for hers to shrink as suddenly as it did. There was a heaping plate of sausages set in the middle, surrounded by biscuits, breakfast potatoes, ham, beans, eggs in all varieties, and gallons of pumpkin juice. At the end of the table was a pile of plates and silverware, ready for any one who might join.

“Perhaps you should call your sister down to join us?”

Ron nodded and turned to dash back upstairs.

“Or, no.” Molly laid a gentle hand on Ron’s forearm, forcing him back down. “Best leave her be, after that owl from Harry yesterday.”

She turned and released his arm, busying herself with more cooking. Ron stared at the wood flooring, warped slightly by nine pairs of feet running up and down it over the years. He felt guilty, though he didn’t quite understand why, for Ginny’s letter from Harry. The trio had lived through a war that none of the others had—it had brought them together, and it was exhausting. Harry didn’t want to put Ginny through the trouble of an absent partner. Harry wouldn’t be the same. Ron knew, he felt he could never return to normal either. Yet Ginny had loved Harry and Ron tried to convince himself that Harry had loved her too, that this was just another casualty of war—a change of heart.

“Wonderful day out. Thought I might tackle some of those garden gnomes this afternoon. Lord knows we’ve left them to run amuck far too long,” Molly hesitated, “join me?” The question quivered in the air for a moment, full of hope.

“Actually I’ve been meaning to…” Cleaning out the garden gnomes had been something Ron and Harry did together one of the first summers he came to stay at the burrow. Harry had been alive with the magic of it all. Ron annoyed that his mother had suffered them all to do housework—but the day now in memory was full of bright light and laughter. It had been one of the best days of his time before Voldemort, when his friendship with Harry was nothing but reckless adventure, easy days at the burrow, and boys-will-be-boys. He was suddenly reminded of how much he missed his best friend.

“I’ve been meaning to visit Harry, but I think the garden can come first.”

Molly looked happily over at Ron. He should be waltzing over to Grimmauld Place with Hermione to restart their lives together, but she was happy for one more day with her son—happy that someone wanted to do something so utterly normal. Garden gnomes were no place for grief.

“Now eat up! You’ll need your energy.”

Ron practically swallowed a sausage whole—he had been starved.

 

Ron apparated that afternoon to number 12 Grimmauld Place. He was standing on the stoop, looking at the dark door that raised up in front of him. If he hadn’t known any better he’d be looking at the crack between the other two buildings, muggle residences. Instead the looming town house opened up its secrets to him. He turned the handle and walked in.

“Harry?” He called into the emptiness, and then his voice caught up in his throat and he stared in shock at the hallway before him.

Despite years of neglect, the hallway almost sparkled with warmth. The rugs had been cleaned, the accent table and portraits all dusted and polished. There was a small chandelier above the threshold of the doorway and the rest of the house. The bulbs had all been replaced and shone out, flickering into a bright, yellow glow like the sun as soon as he entered. He remembered briefly, the moment that Harry, Hermione, and him had come here their seventh year of school—the year they never returned to Hogwarts. A frightening jinx had flown at them, attempting to ward off any unwanted visitors. This Grimmauld Place, however, was open and inviting. No ghost came flying at him, and he smiled. It felt right.

Ron walked down the hallway and peered into the kitchen to his left. It was empty but equally clean and shined. There was even a bowl of fruit set out on the counter. The table was mostly cleaned off with place mats set out—old fashioned mats with a Black family monogram in the center—and a stack of Daily Prophets haphazardly left open. Ron saw Harry’s smiling face beaming up at him from an inside article, calling out “Potter Saved the Wizarding World, Where is He Now?” It was a fluff column, Ron had read it a week ago, half begging half chastising Harry for going away after the war. In response there had been several letters to the editor asking the writer to leave the poor boy alone. He was only 18, they reminded. Ron looked away and called out for Harry again.

“Harry? You here?” Where was he, that Potter, anyway?

The living space has been swept and redecorated. The portraits of the Black family had been replaced with photographs of, well, of himself. Ron walked up to the wall of pictures. There he was, a terribly goofy grin on his face, with an arm around Hermione. Harry had taken the picture—possibly one of the only ones that existed without him in the frame. Next to this was the picture of Harry’s parents that Hagrid had gifted him after his first year of school. There was the old Order, various scraps of pictures he had uncovered of Sirius, Remus, and his dad. The whole wall spread out into an intertwined history of the marauders, their friends, the Weasleys, Bill and Fleur at their wedding, Hermione studying by the Gryffindor fire, Ron and Harry hiding under the invisibility cloak to steal sweets at Hogsmead, their heads body-less and covered in chocolate.

“Ron!” Harry’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs. Ron tore his eyes away from the wall of pictures and smiled over at his best friend.

“Sorry I let myself in.” Ron rocked back and forth on his tiptoes to his heels. The space between them was wide, neither stepped forward to close it. Despite the warmth of the room, the brightness and freshness, the air between them was dead heavy. “You’ve spiffed up the place,” Ron squeaked out. Always the obvious with him.

Harry took those fated steps into the living room with a smile. And with that the heavy veil between them dropped and disappeared. “I did, you know I couldn’t bear to just sit and think. It’s kept me busy. I don’t know half the housekeeping spells Molly does. Most of it I did the muggle way.”

“Relaxing that way, sometimes.” Ron smiled back, thinking of the hours he’d spent alone in his room with a guitar plucking the strings until his fingers bled and calloused over. He mindlessly rubbed some of the calluses.

Harry didn’t know what to say. Ron was his best friend, and so he hoped that the words just were there in his mind the same time Harry was thinking them. He wanted to say something about what they’d experienced, or why he’d kept to himself, or any of it. He willed it to Ron. Ron rubbed his fingers through his hair, grown a solid inch since Harry had last seen him. Harry watched closely the thin fingers draw through the lions mane of his friend’s head. Ron blushed under his gaze, or, no, under the situation.

“How is Molly?” Harry asked tentatively.

“Oh Mum? She’s just, brilliant you know. Always keeping up with us, we hardly deserve her.” There was something false in the answer, as if he hardly believed in what he had said.

“But of course,” Ron continued, “with Fred gone and all. She’s started to knit him loads of sweaters. The yarn is charmed, it keeps unraveling as she goes, takes her ages to finish, if she ever finishes...”

“I don’t think she will.”

Ron stopped, a lump caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry, I…” This was why Harry had stayed away. Whatever he said, however he stood in a room, he just brought too much up. If it hadn’t been for him...

Ron plopped down on the sofa. “Yeah well, Voldemort and all. Not really much you could do about it, other than save us of course.” Ron grinned. He knew that Harry was blaming himself for the casualties, but they were just that, casualties, nothing he could have done—nothing he need worry himself over. “Harry it’s been months,” he added, coaxing his friend to become his friend again.

Harry sat down on the floor in front of the sofa and leaned back, his eyes fixed on the wall of pictures in front of him. He had found some of the pictures in a locked drawer upstairs in Sirius’ old bedroom; they lay seemingly forgotten in his dresser. He was almost afraid to pull them out, afraid he might lose them somehow if they weren’t kept safe. But after a day of thinking it over, Harry decided he was tired of hiding the good things. The picture wall was the first time since Voldemort that Harry allowed himself to feel safe again, that he allowed himself to think of the wizarding world as good in all ways for a good long time now.

“Man, remember that day at Hogsmead? Hermione was so upset,” Ron chuckled.

“She went back later and paid for it all.”

“Of course! We could have been caught!”

“Or worse, expelled.”

The boys roared with laughter. They laughed until their sides hurt—Harry with tears streaming down his cheeks and muddying up his glasses. Ron clinched his sides and fell over onto his side on the sofa, his chest heaving in joy behind Harry’s mop of black hair. This was the real catharsis.

Harry leaned his head back and choked out a few last laughs, his breath caught in his lungs, his mouth making no sound. Ron looked down at his friend, nearly exhausted.

“I’ve missed you,” Ron’s voice was soft and low as he caught his breath.

“Sorry I’ve been away.”

“We’ve all been away.”

“I just couldn’t, I couldn’t do that to you all, you know?”

“Harry, I know, but you’ve got it all twisted.”

Harry turned around to face Ron directly. His face was still stained with tears from the laughter, his glasses glistening. It would easily conceal tears.

“But Fred…”

“Fred died. Harry he died. You didn’t kill him.”

“But if I hadn’t,”

“If you hadn’t, what been around? Voldemort would have killed all of us. We were muggle lovers before you Harry and would have been muggle lovers still.” That shut him up. Harry slouched back down and leaned against the sofa again. Ron’s breathing steady and grounding just behind him. Even Ron, the same Ron that ran off after wearing a horcrux a little too long, the same Ron that ignored him for weeks after his name had been chosen for the Tri-Wizard Tournament, the same Ron that ate slugs for a day when his fighting spirit couldn’t quite keep up with his magical ability, that Ron still thought Harry a hero in every sense of the word. Harry just needed to accept it. Ronald Weasley might have had a bigger ego than Harry Potter those days.

“I suppose.”

“You suppose.” Ron closed his eyes and turned to lay on his back. It was mid afternoon, the air in the house warm and Harry wasn’t wildly depressed and about to suffer the breakdown of the century. Ron felt at ease. He breathed in deeply that relief.

 

Ron, again, woke to the smell of cooking. It wafted in from the kitchen to his nostrils where he lay on the sofa in 12 Grimmauld Place. He always woke up to the smell of cooking. It was his inner alarm, his most base need. Ron was a man of urges.

He sniffled a few times from his position, laying on his back on the sofa. His nose slowly opening his eyes. For a brief moment Ron stared at the ceiling above him, it was farther up than his at the burrow and he was instantly aware that he was not at home any more. He sat up slowly, nose still absently sniffing its way toward the kitchen as he turned his head too look. Harry was standing over the stove, a pan of what smelled like chicken stir-fry in front of him. The kitchen in general was immaculate, as Ron had noticed earlier. The refrigerator a shinny metallic against the dark granite counter tops and almost black cupboards. The Black family designer, apparently, wouldn’t ever let you forget what their favorite color was.

“Have a good sleep?” Harry asked, his voice full of sarcasm. He was certainly trying hard to play the mother in this situation, but flaked on the commitment the role required. Harry was never the best at comedy.

“I must have been exhausted. Mum had me tossing garden gnomes half way to Surrey all morning.”

“What a good boy you are,” Harry’s voice was peaked and feminine, though he couldn’t really pull it off. Every ounce of him was smiling.

“Shut up.” Ron stood up from the sofa and walked over to the kitchen nose first. The nearer he got the more his stomach growled. He had skipped lunch entirely as he made up his mind to visit Harry—pacing about his room and looking at himself in the mirror; must have changed his shirt at least half a dozen times. “Where’d you learn to cook anyway?”

Harry stiffened a little bit, his smile flagging.

“Right. I forgot, sorry,” Ron said as he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand and awkwardly looked down. The Durselys has been a training ground for all kinds of muggle chores, made awful in their severity towards him. In the end the Durselys had tried to make up with Harry, he’d told Ron, but too many years of damage he could never really forgive.

“Its useful. I didn’t think you’d be cooking for us any time soon,” Harry looked over at Ron, that familiar grin back in its place. Ron flushed red. He certainly would not have survived outside of Hogwarts without Harry and Hermione. “It’s about finished, get us plates?”

Ron nodded and set to work guessing which cabinet had dinner plates. Several of the cupboards held incredibly old pieces of glassware and silver. The designs were ornate leaves and floral pieces that looked fragile and expensive. Ron, a Weasley, was unaccustomed. He closed the doors and opened the next and the next then settled on appropriate tableware and pulled out two plates. In a drawer was the silverware, actual silver. Ron barely dared to touch.

“I figured out a good polishing spell for those, I’m sure Hermione would be proud of me. I’m kind of proud of me myself.” Harry beamed.

“Right,” Ron mumbled and set the plates on the counter near the fruit bowl. Two plates and a couple of forks next to the grandeur of the whole town house. Ron marveled at it for a third time. There was an incredible amount of room not occupied by one of his brothers or sister. With the exception of the picture wall, the place was mostly gray. Ron looked back up at Harry. His green eyes blazed by glow of the bright new bulbs, his hair, though black, was messed up and hardly pristine. His skin a warm hazelnut, though perhaps a little pale from his three months of solitude. He was all the decoration this place really needed.

Harry dished out the stir fry and they both pulled up a stool counter height to eat there in the kitchen. Harry dove into the food as equally ambitious as Ron.

“Ohitsgood,” Ron said, mouth full of food and voice some what surprised.

“With you it’s always a tone of surprise.”

Ron chuckled. As much as it was fun to reconnect with Harry, they both felt the awkwardness of the absence of Hermione.

“So I’ve been meaning to ask, but you kind of fell asleep on me earlier.”

“Sorry,” Ron apologized again, going back down to fill his mouth once more.

“ I was going to owl actually, and then you showed up and..”

Ron chewed and looked at Harry expectantly, as if to say “Dude, what?”

Harry swallowed and set his fork down deliberately, why was this so hard for him?

“Do you want to move in here?” Harry’s eyes were wide and slightly afraid, of, well he wasn’t quite sure. Ron and Harry had roomed together for six years, and then set off on foot with Hermione for the greater part of the seventh year to defeat a dark lord terrorizing the whole world—and yet he still thought perhaps Ron might shack up with Hermione, rekindle what they had, or go live with George and run the joke shop together. Ron had a lot of other possibilities, a lot of other futures to go enjoy.

“Course! I’m already basically packed. Love Mum and Dad and Gin and all, but man with Percy back…” Ron drifted off. Of course he had always planned to move in with Harry, he had half a mind to bring his trunk and belongings along when he apparated here earlier. Harry had to know that there wasn’t ever any question of them living together again, Ron was sure certain of it anyway.

“Right, great. You know this place does get kind of,”

“Lonely? Wretched? Cold? Too Pureblood?”

Harry laughed, “lonely.”

“I suppose.”

“Yeah, you suppose.”

“Hey,” Ron scoffed, and shoved in another fork full of stir fry.

 

Ron moved in, and for the next while the boys set to work finishing what Harry had started on the house. They dashed a boggart living in an upstairs cupboard. Ron had yelled at Harry to look away when the boggart faced him straight on, Harry obliged, closing his eyes and not seeing just what it was his friend was afraid of. He thought that chances were it wasn’t a spider anymore.

Tucked away in a closet in an unmarked bedroom were loads of musty clothes. Harry and Ron gingerly pulled at the fabric and tried to air it out but the whole thing was just too old. Some of the dresses, for it was all women’s clothing, looked like it dated back to the 1800s. Harry guessed it was the madame of the house, but that still didn’t seem quite right. They decided to charm the door locked for now and go back to that project last—it seemed the most momentous one.

In other rooms there were pixies to throw out, rags left behind by Kreacher as he had apparently tired to keep polished the furniture and decor, and all manner of dust and cobwebs. Ron shuddered more than a few times as spiders furiously scattered away into corners. Harry secretly killed them with a wordless jinx when Ron unsuspectingly got too close to them. They cleaned and the reorganized and they transformed the house. They set up a menagerie of photographs about the living room, the hallway, the stairwell. Any thing they could find that paid tribute to the marauders, or to the students of Hogwarts, their families, the ones that meant the most.

The boys set up their quarters. Ron’s bedroom was a splatter of maroon and gold and the jarring canary yellow of the Chuddly Canons. His clothes had been put away in a dresser that used to belong to Regulus Black, the faceless finder of the locket horcrux. But already, just a couple of weeks after moving in, his boxers and socks could be seen peaking out of a drawer here or a drawer there, or in piles of unknown cleanliness across the floor. His guitar leaned against the side of the dresser, and his picks were scattered among the clothing. On his nightstand was a framed moving picture of him and Harry, fourteen, with arms wrapped around each other rejoicing in Harry’s second victory in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Ron prized this photograph, not in as much as it represented a looming dark cloud over the wizarding world and their own lives specifically, but in the reminder that he could always trust his best friend. Ron had, just days before that picture was taken, hated Harry in a jealous rage. He never wanted to be that Ron again, and he never was.

Harry’s bedroom, straight across the hall from Ron’s, was slightly more toned down, but was still warm and colorful. He had a fireplace across from his bed, and his blankets were a brilliant green—certainly a matter of Slytherin pride the madame of the house had tried to instill in her Gryffindor son Sirius. It was his old bedroom. All around him Harry felt at ease with the world, he felt a reminder of the good that Sirius had tried to teach him for the short time he was Harry’s godfather—that the world was not split into good and death eaters. Not nearly as messy as Ron’s room, but not nearly as clean as the rest of the house either, Harry’s bedroom was mostly unlived-in. He’d toss in a sweatshirt or a found treasure of the house, and then skip over to Ron to debate quidditch scores or reminisce about Hogwarts.

In between sessions of cleaning and redecorating, the boys played wizards chess. They had set up a board in the living room in front of the fireplace—which blazed warmth into the otherwise dreary home. It was amazing what a chess board, two friends, and a little bit of laughter could do to a place. In the time of the Order, Grimmauld Place had been headquarters, with mysteriously shut doors and secrets. In the time before that it was a deserted remnant of a once great, but dark family. And in the time before that it had been living hell for Sirius Black, a call back to times of yore when race, inheritance, and money had been cornerstones of power.

Now, settling into a game of wizards chess, the house was more-or-less a home. Still a bit dreary, the gray and black impossible to be completely rid of, the mysterious room upstairs still locked and full of secrets, but overall it was comfortable and it was all theirs.

“Alright, so I started last time.” Ron slid his lanky body down onto the floor and crossed his legs. Pushing up the sleeves of his Chuddly Cannons hoodie, he stared down at the board, as if planning two moves ahead already.

“Okay, but, I’ve been thinking…”

Ron looked up at Harry, a chunk of his red hair hanging in his eyes. “And?” He questioned, running his fingers through his hair and pushing it back out of his eyes.

Harry slouched his shoulders and scooted closer to the board. “Well,” he started and then looked Ron in the eyes. The brilliant blue of them piercing Harry’s own made him grin. “I do better when you start.”

“So you want every advantage then?”

“Fine whatever..” But Ron had already moved his pawn up and gave the board to Harry.

“You need all you can get,” he said with a laugh. Harry pulled his wand from his jeans pocket and a fire roared into the fireplace a distinctly ice-blue flame. The fire cast the board in a silvery glow that was as warm as it was blue, Harry thought it quite poetically mimicked Ron’s red hair, brown freckled skin, and eyes. Harry glanced back at Ron, hoping he hadn’t noticed the slight blush in his cheeks.

Harry moved a pawn randomly. What did it matter in the beginning anyway? He still hadn’t learned.

 

Harry had started to go out some times in the evenings, after the sun had gone down. On a particular Thursday evening he discretely met with a few ministry officials, ready to ease back into the wizarding world. There was a lot of work still left to do, and Harry had to find his place in it. Ron, still, wanted to be an auror. Harry felt he should be one too, but there was talk of offering him a higher position. Harry had just that night turned the position down. He wasn’t cut out for it, not just yet. He felt that his abilities had been grossly exaggerated by the Battle of Hogwarts. He was still just Harry, or rather, they were still just Harry and Ron. Harry didn’t want to leave him behind.

When he returned to 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry went quietly to his room. When would he have to break the spell of this place? As he walked through the hallway, eyes already half closed in sleep, Harry heard for the first time Ron’s guitar. The guitar had been brought along with all of his other belongings from the burrow, and Harry had seen it stored in various places throughout Ron’s room, but never had he heard him play it. For a moment Harry felt like he was eavesdropping on something he shouldn’t have. But that was ridiculous. This was Ron, his best friend, and it was just music.

Come let me love you, come let me love you, and then color me in…

Ron’s singing voice was soft, hushed. Harry peaked into the room, the door was just slightly ajar and cast an orange sliver of light into the dark hallway. Ron deftly played the instrument. His red hair again falling over his eyes, it had gotten quite long, his eyes gently closed as he moved into the guitar.

So I tried to forget it, that was all part of the show. Told myself I’d regret it, but what did I know…

“That about Hermione?” Harry asked abruptly. Ron’s turned at once to face Harry, his hand falling over the strings in a harsh cord that lingered as he stared. And then silence for a beat.

“Harry.” Ron’s voice was gruff and something else that Harry couldn't put his finger on, angry, scared.

“Sorry mate, it was good. Never heard you play before, when did you learn all that?”

“No.” Ron was stilted, his gaze dropped from Harry and he sat still with the guitar in his lap his left hand over the neck of the guitar, his right dangling over the strings. The pick dropped onto the sheets of his bed as if it had been suspended in mid air by the music and now faltered and was lost.

“What?”

“It’s not about Hermione!” Suddenly Harry started back. The shout had been unexpected.

“Well I just assumed, okay!” Harry bit back.

Ron looked hurt and Harry instantly regretted what he had said, that he had said anything at all, that he had said that specifically.

“Well why are you just barging in on people like that?” Ron looked away from Harry, his question awkward and like a child’s trying evade the situation.

“Why do you go around hiding things? Why are you playing sappy break up music when I’m gone?” Harry was acting like the old moody teenager he was in fifth year, hurt over what exactly? His friend being a person on his own without him?

“It’s not about Hermione.”

“Okay. Fine. But what about Hermione?”

“What about her?” Ron’s face flushed.

Harry thought maybe Hermione and Ron had been like him and Ginny, or not like them at all. Harry actually didn’t know anything about Ron and Hermione anymore. They had kissed in the middle of the Battle of Hogwarts. Their whole lives together, it seemed, had built up to that moment. Harry had replayed it many times in the months he was alone at Grimmauld Place. Had there been just a moment of hesitation when she threw herself on him? Had there been the slightest pull back before he closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her? Or had it been a mutual understanding that this is where we are now? And then, in the aftermath, they split. Like it had never happened. Like it had been just another awkward moment where they reached for each others’ hands on the train or caressed each others hair in front of the Gryffindor fire. Hermione retreated, Ron retreated, Harry stood still.

“You were together!” Harry shouted, he didn’t know why he was shouting.

“So!” Ron spit at him. “So we were and then we weren’t big deal!”

“Big deal big deal, why did you break up with her?”

“You’re not her dad Harry.”

“Why did you break up with Hermione? Or did she dump you? I deserve to know.”

“Why?”  
“Because! Because it’s Hermione. Because it’s me!”

“Why did you break up with Ginny!?”

Harry stood back. He knew that the rest of the Weasleys must know that he had owled her, but there was a part of him that thought they could end it quietly without an explanation. Perhaps Ron and Hermione had tried to do the same. Too much shame involved, too much relying on an amicable split.

Harry stayed silent.

“Everyone knows you owled her Harry. You sent her a fucking owl. My sister. Why did you break up with Ginny?” Ron tried to control his anger, unsure of just why the conversation had turned this way. It was coming out all wrong.

“Why did you break up with Hermione?” Harry shouted again, furious that it had been turned on him. He did nothing wrong, why were they even shouting about this.

“It’s not about Hermione!” Ron stood up, holding his guitar at his side with white knuckles. His chest heaving and his face beat red. His voice louder than ever. It reverberated throughout the house. Grimmauld Place silent and stoic, deeply laced in dust they could never be fully rid of. It seemed to puff out of the walls as if Ron had grabbed the house by the foundation and shook, but all he was doing was standing. His frame over six feet. His eyes ice. “Why do you have to be so stupid Harry!?”

Harry apparated away—a loud crack whipping through the air and he was gone.

The remnant of the argument lingered in the air like a dissonant chord. Ron stood still in the middle of his room, the Gryffindor memorabilia seemed faded and dim, the air stale and musty in the orange light of the single bulb overhead, the hallway still dark where Harry had quietly slipped in and up the stairs just moments ago. Ron was alone in Grimmauld Place, its blackness reaching, looming all around him, imposing and heavy as if it was all settling in on his chest. And to any regular witch or wizard who might have been passing by, it wasn’t even there at all.

 

Harry stood in front of a cafe in some neighborhood in London. If he was honest, he didn’t even know what street he was on. That was one of the miracles of apparition. You had to know where you were going, but addresses were optional. Harry knew this place. It was the cafe that the trio had escaped to when they ran from Bill and Fleur’s Wedding, the cafe they had anxiously ducked into hoping to figure out their next steps. There had been a skirmish, and death eaters had followed them, and they had been scared. They had run to Grimmauld Place after that, still scared, but together. Harry didn’t know why he had left just then, or why he had come here, but he was scared and this was where they went when they were scared.

Harry felt cold standing in front of the cafe windows staring in at a group of teenage muggles joking over cappuccinos. He stuck his hands in his pockets and breathed out for what felt like the first time since the argument with Ron had started. The sounds of London, a whistling wind and streets of late night traffic, wafted around him. The shouting in his head died away and he turned away from the cafe and started to walk.

By the time the sun started to rise and fill in the city with warm color, Harry knew what he wanted. The streets of London wandered out behind him, his labyrinth of walking and thinking running up to this moment when he decided he knew what he had wanted for the past four years. He apparated again.

The crack of his apparition in the morning suburban air was crisp and cool. Houses spread out in front of him along a silent, curved street. These were particularly muggle residences, Harry could tell. There was a simplicity about them, sure, and signs of mechanical living—lawn mowers lingering in garages, cars parked in the drive, mail boxes. Harry was at once reminded of the Dursleys. The suburban scrawl hid the insides behind locked doors and drawn curtains. Here and there families of dysfunction, families big and small. Families that were rich from hard work, families that were poor from bad luck, families that had in-laws living with them, families that had secrets, and here, where Harry stood, a family of perfectly normal dentists who one day eight years ago got a letter from an owl that told them how magical their daughter really was.

“Harry Potter?” A chipper voice called from an upstairs window.

Harry looked up and smiled at the bushy hair falling out and around the face of Hermione Granger.

Hermione pulled her head back in and not even a whole moment later the front door opened and she ran out to pull him into a fierce hug.

“I’ve been waiting for you to visit,” Hermione spoke gleefully into his ear, still holding him tight in a hug.

Harry nodded and pulled back, but she still hugged him.

“It’s been months Harry.”

Harry let his arms drop and was simply held by Hermione. Her thin arms squeezing harder than he had remembered they could, her hair engulfing him and getting caught in his glasses and his mouth.

“I’ve sent owls.”

“Yes, I,” he mumbled into her hair.

“I’ve sent books. Did you get the books?”

“Yes, Hermione, I,”

“Did you read them?” She was still holding tight to him, but he sensed the end of the hug when she squeezed even harder and breathed into his shoulder as if internalizing his scent or just breathing in relief.

“I might have read half of one.” He smiled at her as she finally pulled away from him. “The one about quidditch. Might have skimmed it.”

Hermione held Harry’s shoulders for a moment before releasing him and stepping backward.

“I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

They stood in front of each other for a little while. Dawn had fully broken now, and the wet, cold dewy morning settled around Harry like a feeling of peace.

“Come inside then!” Hermione turned to let Harry into her parent’s home. “My parents will be up soon for work, they don’t quite know all of what we did Harry but they love you and have been wanting to talk to you for a while. They’ll be so happy to see you. I’m happy to see you Harry. It’s been, it’s been months.” Hermione rattled on as they stepped into the entryway of her home and into the living room. The house was bright and suburban. The furniture was intensely modern compared to Grimmauld Place and the Burrow, but conservative in color choice. At least not everything was black and green. The living room was comfortable, lived in. The air smelled like fresh laundry.

“Tea?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Harry sheepishly stepped inside and looked around him. The Dursleys house had been similar. The television in the center of the living room, the kitchen filled with knickknacks and even some framed artwork from Hermione’s elementary school days. The hallway was lined with pictures of her growing up, all photos still and stationary, the way Harry had grown up—but he had far less pictures taken of him, and none framed and displayed.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?” He turned and looked at Hermione. Her face was distorted into worry, a familiar furrow to her brow, a downward tilt to her mouth slightly ajar ready to start talking again, ready with a cheerful response or an answer or a plan.

“Everything okay?”

Harry nodded to her. Of course she knew the conversation that was about to happen. She had been waiting for three months to hear it, to talk it through. Harry wasn’t just visiting. He couldn’t do that, there was too much between the three of them for anything to be simple just yet.

“Hermione dear?” A motherly voice sounded from the top of the stairs. “We have company?”  
“Yes, mom, it’s Harry! He’s just popped in.”

“Harry Potter?”

“How many Harry’s do we know that would visit at 6 in the morning without notice?”

Hermione’s mother came down the stairs and rounded into the living room with the warmest of smiles on her face. Her hair was brown and bushy, like Hermione’s, but pushed back into a low pony tail.

“Harry dear,” She walked towards him with arms outstretched for a hug. Her voice was as soft and warm as Molly Weasley’s, her hug slightly bonier but still loving, still lingering—like a mother who senses a child that needs her. Harry had this affect on mothers, they all half pitied him.

“Mrs. Granger, I’m sorry it’s so early.”  
“Nonsense. Please, call me Nancy. Tea?”

“Got it mom.” Hermione rummaged through the cupboards for cups for tea as the kettle steamed already on the stove.

“Harry, how have you been? Have you been at the, what was it called Mione? The Bur—“  
“The Burrow. And no, he hasn’t. Harry’s been in London. A town home his uncle used to own.”

Harry nodded. Hermione had been keeping tabs on all of them. He wondered if she knew that Ron had been living with him for a month now, that they were living together without her. He still felt the absence of their third party. Him and her, or him and Ron, it still wasn’t rounded out like it used to be. Perhaps it never would be again. How did people become adults anyway? Did they get office jobs and flats and dogs?

“Yes. I’m on my own there.”

Hermione’s mom looked at him again like he was an orphan chimney sweep living on the streets of the big bad city.

“It feels like home,” he smiled up at her. Grimmauld Place was his home, and it wasn’t lonely anymore.

“And Ronald?” Nancy asked politely.

Hermione stayed silent, pouring the water into the cups. Harry glanced at her. She was calm and focused, her face betraying nothing but a usual morning demeanor.

“Ron’s with me in London.” Harry still wasn’t sure if this was news to Hermione, if it was, he hoped she didn’t feel left out. She had chosen to go back to her parents, though, and to stay. They had all chosen.

Hermione brought Harry his cup of tea. He looked into her eyes when he took it from her. Her eyes were an autumn brown, honey and soft. They were smiling, he thought. She picked up her own cup from the counter and headed for the living room, settling into an armchair and cupping the tea in her hands for its warmth.

“Harry Potter!” Hermione’s father came down the stairs and walked up to Harry with his hand extended. Harry took his hand and shook it. “We’ve wondered when you would come by. This apparating thing that you do,” He looked unsure towards Hermione.

“Yes, dad, apparating.”

“Very convenient.” Harry nodded and laughed. He thought that him and Arthur Weasley ought to get together—what they could teach each other.

“Sorry to cut this short, have a root canal first thing in the morning.” He leaned in to whisper to Harry. “Tried to get Mione to teach me a thing or to—make these things easier, no one likes root canals.”

Harry whispered back. “She wouldn’t would she?”

He leaned in further. “No.”

They both laughed and Hermione rolled her eyes.

“Gary.” Nancy called from the front door.

“Right, root canals. Catch up later?”

Harry nodded and glanced over at Hermione. Catching up would take a while.

The Grangers walked out and shut the door gently behind them. The room was silent. Harry walked sheepishly over to the couch and set his tea on the end table.

Harry stood for a moment awkwardly hovering above Hermione. She looked him in the eye as she sipped her tea. Slowly, he sat down. He looked down and around and almost anywhere but directly at her. He rubbed his hands absently across his knees, tapping his fingers like he was searching for the next words to say. Should he start will small talk?

“So, yeah, what’ve you been—“ Harry started. Hermione, rather loudly, set her tea down on the end table and scooted forward in the arm chair so that she was leaning forward, elbows on knees, looking right at Harry.

“Harry.”

“Yeah?” Harry took a breath. This was just Hermione. He had been filled with so much purpose an hour ago, but now he was scared of heartbreak, of any emotion he might unexpectedly bring forward. “Right, well the thing is I don’t know where to start.” He smiled a half smile at her, his cheeks turned the slightest shade of pink.

“I know that we ended kind of…weird,” Hermione said, pulling out of her let’s-get-down-to-business stance.

“You could say that.”

“There was just so much expectation and we—obviously none of us knew how to handle it,” Hermione was right on almost everything. It was hard to imagine that she had been just as confused, just as shell-shocked as Harry and Ron had been.

Harry simply nodded.

“A lot of things changed.”

He nodded.

“We needed to think it all over, analyze.”

He nodded again, this time slower, more deliberate as if he was slightly confused.

“All three of us needed to grieve, obviously.”

“Are we talking about Ron or the war?”

Hermione sighed, “We’re talking about both.”

Harry looked into her eyes, they were glistening with tears and his heart sank.

“Harry I haven’t talked to you, not really, since it all. I know you’re here about Ron. I expected it. Somehow you expected I’d expect it. I’m actually pretty happy you want to talk about Ron. It’s really kind of sweet. But it’s all rolled up into one thing, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean you expected it? It’s sweet? Hermione what don’t I know?”

It wasn’t all that unusual in fact for Harry to not connect the dots. Pretty much his entire seven years of school with Ron and Hermione was spent with the boys trailing a few steps behind her logic. Harry had come here with hopes of learning a little more about why they had broken up. Ron wasn’t really the type to fess up about these sorts of things, and if their shouting match had been any indication it was a sore subject. Harry had his own feelings, he was steadily pushing them into a corner of himself in case they needed to be kept safe and hidden for possibly forever, or ready to be pulled up and out again if the chance should ever arise when…when he might…but he was here to pull their friendship back together. He had decided on his long, midnight stroll through London that he was going to be a hero again. Save the day, that was all.

Hermione took a deep breath and hastily grabbed for her tea and took a big gulp.

“Hermione?” Harry whined at her.

“It’s not really my place to say,” she looked away from him for the first time.

“Well he won’t tell me.”

“You asked him?”

“What?” Harry wanted to shake her. When did she become so mysterious? When did he stop knowing his friends deepest, darkest secrets?

“He won’t tell me why you two broke it off. That’s why I’m here. Yes, the war, it happened. It’s been months. We’ve all been a little out of it, but if there’s anything us three know it’s that. But this,” Harry gestured to her and the empty spot on the couch next to him. “We don’t know how to get over this, or I don’t, and no one will tell me what’s going on.”

“Harry, really it’s not my place to say. If he hasn’t told you,” Hermione’s voice faded off.

“We got in a fight, and you know him, he gets stubborn,” Harry pleaded with her.

Hermione couldn’t help it but giggle, “Well we all know Ron.”

“Some of us more than others, apparently.” Harry was still a little hurt about it all. Just as stubbornly as Ron himself. Perhaps a layer of jealousy had been brooding all this time, perhaps not.

“We were never really together Harry,” Hermione started. Harry sat back in the sofa. “I mean, all of that stuff—you know.”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t a lie, but when I kissed him it wasn’t like we were suddenly together or something. I had hoped, I had a small hope, then, but now I just can’t imagine it.” Hermione paused for a moment and looked into Harry’s eyes. They were searching, honest. “What we had was just flirting mixed with loneliness. Sometimes you’d be off on one of your, boy-who-lived moments and”

“I never meant,” Harry interjected.

“I know, I know. It wasn’t like you’d abandoned us, but we had each other differently, you know. And I guess that’s where the kiss came from, a lot of years of pent up…hormones. But, and I think I knew this always in the back of my mind, Ron loved someone else.”

Harry sat quietly without moving. His expression frozen like the still photographs littering the walls of the house. Ron loved someone. Harry couldn’t, in that moment, think of a single name. If not Hermione, then…

“You, Harry.” Hermione had leaned forward and reached out as if to grab Harry by the knee and shake it to wake him up. “Ron loves you.”

“He told you that?”

“Yeah, he told me. He said that he didn’t think the three of us could work if, if me and him were to try it out because seeing you would bring up so many feelings. I mean it was never an option that we wouldn’t see each other, the three of us I mean, now and then.”

Harry nodded and looked down at his hands in his lap.

“Actually,” Hermione sat back again, and took a deep breath. “I thought maybe you were here to ask my permission.”

Harry looked up. His eyes were filled with tears. His smile hidden, but almost visible to a trained eye.

“You have it,” She smiled warmly at him. “You had it a long time ago.”

 

Harry Potter finally admitted to himself that he was, in fact, gay and in love with his best friend Ron. He had actually said it out loud for the first time to an oak tree in a park just down the road from the Grangers.

“I’m gay and in love with my best friend.” Click your heels three times and say that there’s no place like home. Harry grinned and blushed, and set off again in another random direction.

Harry had, of course, already known this when he went to see Hermione. There had been that secret part of him that had wanted them not to be together, that same part that had propelled him forward to find out the truth instead of waiting for it to reveal itself after weeks or months, or who knows when the “healing” process completed itself. It was only just luck that it was now a fact tied up into a pretty package with a bow: Ron was in love with him back.

Throughout the years there had been glances. There had been raced heart beats and stolen moments, a hand brushing against another, but none had been interpreted as anything other than an unfortunate case of unrequited love. In fact, after the war Harry had admitted to himself the first half of it, that he was gay. He knew it like he knew he was a wizard, but there was always a part of him a little slow to the uptake.

Harry was walking he didn’t know where. He’d stop, breathe deeply, look around himself, and start off again in another direction. The air was chill, and the morning was in full steam. Muggles poured out of their homes. Mothers walked children to the park, started the first errands of the day, went to work or daycare or school. Cars started to peal out of drives and roar onward. Harry was suddenly alive with it all. He hadn’t slept in quite a few hours now. He’d gone from meeting with ministry officials to turn down a lucrative job offer, to fighting with Ron, to disappearing on him and having the talk of a lifetime with Hermione.

Harry felt himself being pulled in every direction, at once alive with every ounce of the world pouring into his skin and prickling him awake. He turned and darted off down a cul-de-sac. Mid step he apparated.

The wind picked up when he landed at the Burrow. His hair flew out behind him and he felt chill through his jeans and zip up sweatshirt. But he kept walking with purpose up to the front step of that familiar, happy, incredibly warm place known as the Burrow. He paused for just a moment at the door, and then placed a hand gingerly on the knob and opened it.

Harry stepped into the kitchen. No one was around, but the whole of the place felt immediately lived in. The kitchen table was already half loaded with breakfast. The dishes already moving and cleaning themselves in the sink. The way into the living room was empty of people but full of things. Harry saw a stack of textbooks stacked up next to a cleansweep broom leaning against the wall—Ginny’s broom, and likely her books for the coming school year. Hogwarts would kick back into session in a matter of weeks. The normalcy of it hit Harry and he felt warm and welcomed.

The famous Weasley clock still ticked on the wall in the hallway just beside the stairs. Harry peered closer to see that most of the Weasleys were here, somewhere, safe at home. Ron was in London. Arthur at the ministry already. Fred…

“Harry Potter!” Molly Weasley’s voice flew at him, shrill and excited. “My my Harry, dear!” She bumbled toward him and Harry opened his arms to hug her. She squeezed him like Hermione had and kissed his cheek.

“Is Ron with you?” She looked behind him to the doorway, and then to the kitchen table as if she expected him to be there already seated and digging in.

“Just me,” Harry squeaked out. He wasn’t exactly nervous, maybe a little bit. “I wanted to talk to Ginny, if she was here.”

Molly smiled sweetly down at Harry, her hands still on his shoulders. “Of course dear.” There was a touch of sadness in her voice, or was it wisdom? Seven children, seven lives going in every direction, Molly hoped for the best for all of them. Sometimes what was best was difficult at first. She’d learned that with Charlie as he ran off to tame dragons. She’d learned it again with Percy whose ideals had taken him so far away from where he began but eventually brought him back again. And even with Ron, Ron had been difficult in his own way. He felt he was always in the shadows. Molly thought, no matter the outcome, the fact that Harry was here to talk was all that mattered. “She’s upstairs, I think she’s awake.”

“Thanks,” Harry muttered and moved towards the stairs.

“And Harry dear, stay for a bit of breakfast when you’re done? You look starved.” Harry nodded and laughed to himself. No matter how thick he grew in the middle, he’d always look starved to Molly Weasley. Again, he had that affect on mothers.

Harry took the stairs two at a time, anxious to be at the top, but not so anxious to apparate there. He still needed a few moments, to compose himself he supposed, but more likely to hold onto this feeling in case it was about to be taken away. He had to do this, though. He had to make sure that it would be okay. Future family holidays aside, it was the right thing. Harry had specifically not done the right thing the first time around.

He stood in front of her bedroom door. Ginny was on the third floor of the burrow’s massive stack of additions and layers and floors and half floors. He reached a hand up to knock and paused, once again, to swallow and breathe before closing his eyes and leaning forward into a successive six knocks all at once.

“Uhm, hello?” Harry heard Ginny get up and cross over to the door.

The door opened at once and Harry felt he was about to tumble inside, but he stayed put and looked up at Ginny with the most ridiculous grin plastered across his face.

“Harry!” Ginny exclaimed and rushed into a hug.

Once again, Harry let his arms fall to his side as he was squeezed by the women in his life. He hadn’t spoken to her since the owl. He took every second of the hug he could get, this was a good sign.

“Hi.” He said sheepishly as Ginny pulled away from him.

“Hi.” She said back, and for a moment the air between then was full and awkward.

“Can we talk?” He asked, looking into those brown eyes he’d looked into so many times his fifth and sixth year. There was something incredibly comforting about them, and about her, and it was the inexplicable reason that Harry had stayed with her through the end of the war. Trios, it seemed, didn’t cover the full range of feelings that needed to be felt during hard times. When Ron and Hermione retreated into each other, Harry sought this friendship with Ginny.

“Of course.”

He resisted the urge to tell her how much like her mother she sounded.

But then in a moment she had kicked over a pile of dirty laundry and sat cross legged on her bed—atop sheets of the Holyhead Harpies. He remembered the hours they had spent planning quidditch practices or betting on their favorite players in the national leagues.

Harry stood awkwardly in the middle of her room, until she gestured for him to join her on the bed.

“Harry, really, let’s not make this too awful.”

Harry cringed. “I’m sorry Ginny.”

“Sorry for what Harry? If you’re sorry for the owl, you should be. An owl! Really, the boy-who-lived broke up with me over an owl.”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck as he walked over and sat down next to her on the bed.

“Yeah, well, about that...”

“If you’re sorry for breaking up with me, you shouldn’t be. I don’t blame you Harry.”

“I am sorry I wrote the owl,” he started. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t face you, it’s just that I never told anyone and the scene…well I couldn’t make you cry in front of your family. I might have been killed.”

Ginny laughed. Her laugh was like gold. It reverberated across the room all shiny and full. Her mouth opened wide and let the sound out full force. Her long red hair fell down her back in ripples with the sound. Harry couldn’t help but smile himself, and break into a chuckle.

“You might have.” She nudged him. Harry dropped his hands into his lap and shrugged.

“Look, I guess if we’re having that talk,” Ginny laid her head on his shoulder. “It did hurt a little bit. Only because of me, not you.”

Harry leaned into her and rested his head atop hers. Her hair felt silky and just like he remembered it.

“I think you’re the only one who would say it quite like that.”

“It’s true, though, Harry. I don’t blame you—how can you be with me if you’re, you know.”

“If I’m gay,” if he was a cartoon his chest would have puffed up from the pride. “I’m saying it out loud now. Not just in owls.”

“Oh?”

“You’re still the only one who knows, well, Hermione I guess…yeah I guess Hermione now, too.”

“Ron?” The name lingered in the air like a spell. Harry thought he could reach out and grab hold of it with the weight it carried.

“That’s why I’m here, actually.”

Ginny moved her head from his shoulder and turned to face him. “I don’t know how to tell him either, I…Hermione would..”

“No, well, it’s not about telling him,” Harry breathed in and looked at her, trying to will something into her rather than explaining it. “I want to ask you if it’s alright with you if you’re okay with it, if I could get your permission to be with Ron. Like. Romantically.”

Ginny blinked.

“Hermione told me that Ron told her that he’s bisexual, or that he told her at least that he likes me, like that, like I like him. I like him, Ginny, I love him. But if it’s too difficult, if you don’t think that it would be okay for you,” Harry wasn’t used to being the one who rambled on, he wasn’t sure how to stop it once he’d started. “I owe it to you, Ginny. I care about what you think, about how you feel. I caused a lot of damage just by being me, and I can control this, this thing, this time around. I can minimize the casualties.”  
“Casualties? Harry, you think there’s casualties, there’s not. I’m not a casualty. Hermione certainly isn’t a casualty. We’re your friends Harry, we know what that means, what we signed up for.”  
“What you signed up for? Like I’m a curse.”

“No! It means that we wouldn’t stand in the way of love, not for anything.” Ginny reached out and grabbed his hand.  
“First of all, the irony of this situation,” Ginny smiled. Hadn’t Ron demanded that Harry explain himself when he and Ginny had kissed? Hadn’t he doled out his permission like he was in some way in control of Ginny’s romantic choices? “But harry, you don’t need my permission. If you want it, you have it, but you don’t need it. I’m going back to Hogwarts in September, going to get my NEWTS, I’ll be quidditch captain. I don’t have time to think about you snogging my brother. Though I hope he can teach you some technique.”

“Hey!” Harry feigned looking hurt. She was so spot-on it stung a little bit.

Ginny let out a laugh and laid her head back on Harry’s shoulder. Now-a-days Ginny was ready and raring to go—she felt like her love for Harry had been more like a long, devoted friendship if anything else. It was now turning into the sort of thing she felt for her brothers. Yes she had laid awake some nights thinking about him, his body, everything in between, but she’d also thought that about any number of people. Break ups, over time, if they were for the right reasons, got better. Ginny was hyper focused on what she was going to do with her life. She wanted to be the next Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies.

“It’s okay Harry. Hermione and I have lives beyond you boys, you know. I don’t know what you and Ronald plan to be doing with yourselves,” there was a wink in her voice, “—but Hermione is fast tracked for Minister of Magic I’m sure of it.”

“Minister?”

“You sound surprised?”

Harry broke into laughter too and rested his chin atop Ginny’s head of fiery hair. “No, I suppose not.”

“You suppose.” Ginny scoffed, lightheartedly.

Harry smiled and felt warmth bubbling up inside of him. He wrapped his arms around Ginny and squeezed her into a hug. Hermione, Ginny, Molly, the countless women in his life were right about everything it seemed. He was grateful. Where would he and Ron be without them? From the kitchen three floors down Harry could hear Molly bustling about. George’s laugh floated up the stairs. There was a crack of apparition in the room above them, Percy’s room, returning home from morning work in London, returning where he belonged.

“Breakfast?” Harry asked, pulling away from Ginny.

Ginny rolled her eyes and then stood up and held out her hand for Harry. They walked down to breakfast together—which Harry ate as quickly as politeness allowed, Ron was waiting.

 

Harry stood on the sidewalk before number 12 Grimmauld Place. He watched it slowly slide into place, the houses adjacent silently tumbling outwards—the muggles inside unaware of the magic happening all around them. The house locked into its spot, standing tall and dark and strong.

Inside, Ron sat on the sofa in the living room with his guitar on his lap. He stared into the fireplace, hands poised to start playing, his mind wandering down a hundred different paths. The night before had left him incredibly empty, like he had lost a part of him when Harry ran away. That’s what Harry had done, run away. Ron knew that Harry often walked out alone, that he seemed to only think things through when he was alone—Ron had spent the night hoping that this was all and that Harry would any moment walk back into his life. Ron had thought, perhaps stupidly, that all he needed was to live with Harry and carry on in any sort of normal way for the rest of his life. He had thought that would be enough for him. It was obvious that it wasn’t. How long did he really expect to carry on in the dark of night, playing for only his heart, hiding it all from his best friend?

When early dawn broke Ron had walked down to the living room with his guitar and set up to wait for Harry, so he could play for him, and leave it once and for all out in the open before the fire and the wizards chess table and the picture wall of this place, their home. In the morning hours he had attempted several times to play something to ease his nerves. Nothing but a few chords spilled out. At some point he magicked the fire into being and tried to focus on its flames, tried to gleam from them something like optimism. This many hours spent alone and awake and afraid and he hadn’t even worked out yet what he was going to say. Telling Hermione how he felt had been easy, but Harry…

The front door opened, pulling Ron from his revere.

Harry felt the warmth of the fire as soon as he had closed the front door behind him. Somehow Grimmauld Place was now soft and welcoming. He walked down the hallway already expecting to see Ron on the sofa. For a moment they locked eyes and simply looked at each other. Ron was sitting with his guitar. Harry glanced down at it, at the fire, the chess table that was still halfway through a game they had abandoned two days ago. If you were any good at analyzing chess tables you’d have seen just how badly Ron was trying to let Harry win, Harry, endearingly, was not any good at analyzing chess tables, or friendships, or love until it hit him in the face with magical force.

“Hi,” Harry put his hands in his pockets, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Hi,” Ron said back, his voice smiling and gentle.

“I’m sorry I left like that.”

Ron nodded and looked down at his guitar. His heart was beating fast, his breathing less smooth, his face softly turning pink around the edges. “I’m sorry that I tried to hide from you.” He lifted up his guitar slightly. Ron couldn’t quite bring himself to apologize for shouting—he didn’t want to apologize for anything that he felt so strongly as what he felt for Harry. He hadn’t been shouting at him, Harry knew that.

Harry walked over into the living room and took a seat next to Ron on the sofa. Harry didn’t know what to say next. His talks with Hermione and Ginny had filled him with purpose, but not exactly with all of the answers. He took a deep breath, thinking maybe Ron was feeling the same, that unexplainable loss of words when words were needed most.

“I want to play for you,” Ron cleared his throat. “I, uh, I actually wrote it for you.” Ron looked cautiously up into Harry’s eyes. Harry’s eyes spoke back, unsure. For me?

“Alright, well. It’s called Color Me In.” Ron put himself out there, and looked down to his guitar, to the floor, to Harry’s sneakers, ready as he ever would be.

Harry watched Ron’s face the whole time; nothing could make him look away.

_I tried to repress it, then I carried its crown_

_I reached out to undress it and love let me down_

_Love let me down_

 

_So I tried to erase it, but the ink bled right through_

_**Almost drove myself crazy when these words led to you** _

 

_And all these useless dreams of living alone_

_Like a dogless bone_

 

_So come let me love you_

_Come let me love you and then color me in_

 

_**Well, I tried to control it and cover it up** _

_I reached out to console it_

_It was never enough, never enough_

 

_So I tried to forget it, that was all part of the show_

_Told myself I'd regret it,_ _**but what do I know** _

 

_**About all these useless dreams of living alone** _

_Like a dogless bone_

 

_So come let me love you_

_Come let me love you and then color me in_

 

_**Come let me love you** _

_**Come let me take this through the end** _

_Of all these useless dreams of living in all these useless dreams_

_All these useless dreams of living in all these…_

 

_Come let me love you_

_Come let me love you_

_Come let me love you_

_Come let me in_

 

 

Ron’s fingers failed him for the last few cords. His voice faded and dropped to the floor like a heavy stone he’d been carrying for eighteen years. He had just enough time to look up at Harry when in half of a moment he was knocked back from the force of Harry’s lips pressed against his.

Harry’s eyes fluttered closed when he had practically lunged towards Ron, his lips aching to touch the ones that had just sung out their love for him. Yet, Ron was still as Harry kissed him. In a second, when it had registered, Ron slid the guitar out from between them, opened his mouth to accept the kiss, and wrapped his arms around Harry pulling him closer into him, not ready in the least bit to let him go.

The kiss lasted for a thousand moments. Ron moved his hands to hold Harry at the small of his back and the nape of his neck, his fingers running through his messy, black hair. Harry’s hands rested on Ron’s chest. Ron kissed furiously, Harry kissed shyly. They melted into each other, into the sofa, into the fire roaring inside of them.

Eventually pulling their lips apart, eyes still closed, foreheads resting against each other, Harry whispered into the space between them, “Ron.”

Ron nudged him back into a kiss, gentle and sweet. Pulling their lips apart for seconds at a time and going back in for one more kiss, and then another. In this way they slowly sat up right, having fallen into the sofa before, and pulled apart all the way to look into each others faces. Lips slightly puffy and faces flushed red, the boys breathed heavily allowing their hearts to slow and their voices to find the words.

“Harry,” Ron started. His eyes searched Harry’s. “Harry,” words failed him.

“I love you.”

Ron breathed in sharply; his blue eyes welled with tears. The words sounded like everything he had imagined them to sound like: golden spirals of magic filling every dark shadow, every forgotten crevice—sparks red and blue and pink blinding and enlightening at the same time. His world gone deaf and yet at once alive with the music of those three words, half sung half whispered. “I love you too.” Completely at ease with the world.

Harry grinned widely and Ron leaned forward towards him again. His hand brushed against Harry’s cheek and he buried his fingers in Harry’s hair, pulling his face towards his own. “What took us so long?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled Harry down on top of him and kissed him until forever seemed to pass and they fell asleep in each others arms.

 

Around noon, Ron awoke to the smell of stew simmering on the stove. He was laying on the sofa in 12 Grimmauld Place, his left arm fallen over the edge, knuckles just grazing the rough carpet underneath. This was where Harry had gently eased himself out of Ron’s arms and got up to start the day—having slept hardly even two hours since he had last woken up a day ago. His mind and body buzzed with energy.

For a moment Ron simply lay where he was, trying to remember what had occurred earlier that morning, wondering if it had been a dream—a very lucid dream. His guitar was haphazardly tossed aside and Ron saw Harry’s wand laying on the edge of the coffee table. Harry had come back, then. Ron touched his lips as if he could still feel the lingering kisses and outlined the chapped skin with his fingers. He sat up and looked over to the kitchen.

Harry sat at the counter top with his elbows on the granite, one hand propping up his head the other mindlessly drawing shapes on the surface. He glanced up at the movement and smiled over at Ron. The hallway between them not more than a few feet of space.

“Morning,” Harry said, his tone casual and charming. His lips parted into a smile and Ron wanted to kiss them again.

“Morning,” he smiled back. Ron stood up and walked over to Harry, around the edge of the counter so he was standing just behind him. Harry spun around and rested his hands on Ron’s hips, looking shyly up into his eyes. Ron seemed to loom over him over six feet tall, Harry could lean forward and hear his heart beat. Ron pushed a strand of hair from Harry’s face, his fingers grazing his scar and settling to cup his cheek.

“So what’s next?” Ron asked, his thumb passed over Harry’s lips and Harry kissed it and pulled away to look at him.

Harry nodded out the kitchen window that looked out into a private garden behind them. It was late August, the weather cooling into fall, the sun shining golden over the garden in full bloom. Spirals of colors rose up from the ground. Flowers spilled out of pots too small for them. Wild flowers grew in corners and patches. Bright magentas, soft blues, pale yellows with fiery orange centers blazed full of life.

“Well, I’ve been meaning to clean out the garden gnomes.” Harry smiled up at Ron, his index finger gently rubbing circles into the skin exposed just above Ron’s jeans.

 

The End

 

 

 

 


End file.
